ShortTakes

A briefing of people, issues and events around the country

SALT LAKE CITY -- The biggest copper heist in Utah memory has stripped more than six miles of wire from a stretch of Salt Lake City highway.

The Utah Department of Transportation first noticed the theft Thursday, officials said, but they don't know when exactly thieves snatched up the wire. The thieves either disguised themselves as a construction crew or worked in the middle of the night on multiple occasions to yank wire from the median of Interstate 15, said roadway lighting engineer Richard Hibbard.

The department doesn't know exactly when the theft happened because many highway lights all over the Wasatch Valley haven't been working. The thieves likely used sledgehammers to smash into boxes of wires running to light poles, clipped the copper and then used cars or trucks to pull 30,000 to 35,000 feet of wire out of the ground, authorities said.

Car towed from N.C. crash scene with body inside

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The body of a missing North Carolina woman was found inside her wrecked car, three days after it was ordered by a state trooper to be towed away from the crash scene.

Carolyn Ann Watkins, 62, of Clayton, was reported missing by her son early Monday after she failed to show up at work.

An accident report filed Friday by N.C. Highway Patrol Trooper Marlon Williams shows her crashed 2000 Pontiac was found Friday morning in a deep ditch near Smithfield, about 30 miles southeast of Raleigh. Both air bags deployed.

"Note: No driver at the scene of this collision," Williams wrote in his report.

The patrol had a local towing company move the car to a lot for storage, where it remained with the Clayton woman inside until her body was discovered Monday evening by a Smithfield police officer.

California college instructor on leave after fight

FRESNO, Calif. -- An instructor at Fresno City College is on paid administrative leave after getting into a fight with a female student who was allegedly slammed to the ground during the brawl.

The 19-year-old student, Kevynn Gomez, said she cursed at instructor Brian Calhoun before their March 22 fight because he was being rude to students and a substitute teacher in her class, according to a campus police report cited by the Fresno Bee.

Gomez said Calhoun grabbed her arm and used his forearm to pin her neck against a wall, so she punched him in the face. Calhoun then lifted the 5-foot, 101-pound Gomez and slammed her onto the ground before students pulled him away, according to the report.

Calhoun was cited for misdemeanor battery and ordered to appear in court on June 19.

CDC: Rabies no longer threat to 3 organ recipients

Federal public health officials say three people who received organs from a rabies-infected donor in 2011 are no longer in danger of coming down with the deadly disease.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said Tuesday that the organ recipients in Florida, Georgia and Illinois have all completed post-exposure rabies treatment and are out of harm's way.

A Maryland man who received a kidney from the same Florida donor died of rabies in February, about 18 months after his transplant operation.